Embarrassing Dispatches From The SCO Front

An anonymous reader writes "Dennis Ritchie has acknowledged he with Ken Thompson wrote the code cited as 'proof' by SCO. This seems to fit perfectly with Bruce Perens' Analysis of SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show, and undermine Blake Stowell's claim 'At this point it's going to be his word against ours." Andreas Spengler writes "In the ongoing battle between SCO and the Linux community, German publisher Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code. In effect, SCO has proven publicly that they violated the BSD license." (Warning, article is in German.) Finally, a semi-anonymous reader writes "Learn all about how IBM's stomach will be roasted on a pyre of CDs at WeLovetheSCOInformationMinister."

Comments

This adds weight to my hypothesis

[twelveinchbrain]

You may recall that recently SCO declared the GPL invalid. I believe the real reason why they did that is not, as many believe, because they continued to distribute Linux after they announced their lawsuit, but instead because they have actual Linux code inside their own SCO Unix. So far, this is just a hypothesis, but I think it best explains their action.

If in fact they have copied BSD code in violation of the BSD, then it's very plausible that they have copied GNU/Linux code in violation of the GPL.

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Micah]

> It's currently being hit by a massive DDoS.

Ok, cool. But why would someone do that on a Saturday? Should have done it during the week when their customers might be more likely to try to get to their site.

Of course, this tactic opens up a massive internal conflict. :) On one hand, I really hate to think that people will associate the Linux community with this kind of thing. On the other hand, I couldn't be more happy to see these guys getting what they deserve.

Ultimately, since it's illegal and rather immature, we really should put our foots down against this type of technique. SCO will be crushed in the marketplace and in court soon enough. We don't need to take down their site for that to happen.

Re:Kiss SCO's copyrights goodbye

[xwu]

Hey SCO, how do you feel about paying IBM's (and anyone else you were thinking of suing) legal costs?

It's clear that SCO executives were planning to inflate share prices, dump stock, then run. SCO won't be paying anybody's legal costs after it declares bankruptcy.

re: using the dmca

[bman08]

because its illustrative of just how stupid a law it is. if major companies were as routinely screwed by this law as the little guy, the DMCA would be a memory.

argument won't work

[penguin7of9]

SCO can have the GPL or BSD licenses declared invalid all they want--the code is still copyrighted. With the GPL or BSD in place, at least they have the excuse that "it's free anyway, we just got sloppy about satisfying a few conditions". But if they actually argue that they believe the GPL and BSD license are invalid, then they are committing willful copyright infringement of code they have no license at all for.

Re:SCO doesn't care

[yetanothertechie]

Continuing to cover this is not particularly useful...

...wait until SCO does something that we can actually respond to before rewarding any more of their tantrums.

I disagree. While SCO's FUD machine won't be stopped with facts, when this case gets to court the facts are what will make the critical difference. We need to have as much visibility into SCO's shenanigans as possible, so that as many of us as possible can get our heads together, do our research, and completely refute their allegations.

In another vein, until the case gets to court and gets resolved, we're battling in the court of public opinion. I've noticed that there's a wonderful amount of coverage being given to our (collective) refutations of SCO's allegations. We need to keep this up so that the public (including those who make IT decisions) are kept informed as to the true status of SCO's groundless claims. Linux is really gaining momentum these days - we need to make sure to strongly counter SCO's claims so that the momentum keeps building.

Re:SCO's Website Down

[Fnkmaster]

I'm pretty sure you're right. The weird part is that the short interest is so high, it's shorted to the hilt, and nobody wants to take a long, so you can't really go short anymore with your account. So the market isn't able to push the price down to reflect the average perception of the worth of this stock right now. And the people holding are all "believers" who aren't going to part with their shares until somebody shoves their nose right in the shit that's been coming out of Darl's mouth and lets them smell the roses for themselves. So there's no big selling movement yet, and nobody else can short. Basically this is going to hang on to a pretty high share price until the legal system has had a go with it, or until analysts with general respectability in the finance world point out what a smelly piece of shit SCOX stock is right now. And unfortunately, the lack of shares available for the borrowing (i.e. to short with) seems to mean the average Joe Investor can't turn much of a profit on this baby right now.

I'm sure this must be a fairly well known phenomenon, but it strikes me as remarkably poor marketplace efficiency - the market is supposed to be a good indicator of the aggregate psychological perception of worth of an equity, and right now the rules of engagement are preventing the market mechanism from working well for SCOX.

True believers and bubbles

[mec]

I'm inclined to believe in the "true believer" theory.

Look, I think that SCOX is worth $0.50 to $1.00 per share. I'm sure for the Slashdot crowd, that's a high estimate, and I'll get a bunch of replies saying "no! $0.01 per share! $0.000001 per share! Negative $699 per share!" But face it, reality says that there are people, right now, who are actually paying $13 per share for SCOX.

I have to try to get inside these people's heads, and I have to do it without taking cheap shots, which means that everyone else will take cheap shots at ME, the messenger.

But if you really want to understand ...

McBride gets up on stage with "Slide A" and "Slide B". McBride says that Slide A is from SCO Unix. McBride says that Slide B is from Linux. It's obvious to everybody that Slide B looks like Slide A.

Then the Linux community replies and says "We admit that Slide B is from Linux 2.4 Yes, but that code is properly licensed. Yes, but that code doesn't run on desktops or embedded systems. Yes, but that code has already been removed from the 2.6 series".

All of these things are true, and they are all important in a court of law. Especially the bit about proper licensing.

But the SCO-lovers and the Linux-haters aren't interested in "Yes, But". So our message doesn't make it through their filter. They put a lot of weight on "Slide B equals Slide A", and are not listening to an argument that Slide B has every legal right to look like Slide A.

Human beings are like that. They discount arguments and evidence that disagree with them. And once a human being "flips the bozo bit" on another person, or another group of people, it stays flipped.

That's what I think is happening with the stock.

As far as "marketplace efficiency" goes -- whole new topic. I agree that this kind of bubble is inefficient for capital formation. However, it does satisfy the psychological need of people to identify with something that embodies their ideals, just like a sports team. Some people buy SCOX because it fulfills their desire to hate Linux.

Re:SCO's Website Down

[pfleming]

What better way to show that it's stupid than to 'overuse' it? Linus Torvalds sends DMCA letter to SCO's upstream provider? Cool....